Re: Microsoft deems all DigiNotar certificates untrustworthy, releases updates

[Cameron Byrne <cb.list6 () gmail com>]

On Sep 10, 2011 11:38 PM, "Damian Menscher" <damian () google com> wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 9, 2011 at 11:33 PM, Jimmy Hess <mysidia () gmail com> wrote:
>
> > On Fri, Sep 9, 2011 at 4:48 PM, Marcus Reid <marcus () blazingdot com>
wrote:
> > > On Wed, Sep 07, 2011 at 09:17:10AM -0700, Network IP Dog wrote:
> > > I like this response; instant CA death penalty seems to put the
> > > incentives about where they need to be.
> >
> > I wouldn't necessarily count them dead just yet;  although their legit
> > customers must be very unhappy  waking up one day to find their
> > legitimate working SSL certs suddenly unusable....
> >
> > So DigiNotar lost their "browser trusted"  root CA status.  That
> > doesn't necessarily mean they will
> > be unable to get other root CAs to cross-sign CA certificates they
> > will make in the future, for the right price.
> >
> > A cross-sign with CA:TRUE  is  just as good as being installed in
> > users' browser.
>
> The problem here wasn't just that DigiNotar was compromised, but that they
> didn't have an audit trail and attempted a coverup which resulted in real
> harm to users.  It will be difficult to re-gain the trust they lost.
>
> Because of that lost trust, any cross-signed cert would likely be revoked
by
> the browsers.  It would also make the browser vendors question whether the
> signing CA is worthy of their trust.

Yep. The CA business is one of trust. If the CA is not trusted, they are out
of business.

Cb

> Damian
> --
> Damian Menscher :: Security Reliability Engineer :: Google